We review the Fractal Design Torrent Nano in a white finish, a silent PC housing for small form factor motherboards. For this Mini-ITX ready chassis can you'll be surprised about storage, style, USB 3.x options. Next to that, it's rather an airflow-friendly, tiny, and nice-looking Mini-ITX chassis. In general, this case is very well-designed, well-built, and does pretty much everything that it needs to do very well if not extremely well.

I also have one more comment - I don't see how you would (easily) fit a front-mounted 240mm AIO in this case without a lot of planning. Obviously it fits because Fractal says it fits. If you want to go this route (which I wouldn't recommend, this case is designed for airflow), you should install the AIO before you install any other components. Also, you can only fit a bottom-mounted AIO (which you shouldn't do) if you don't install a graphics card. You can find the full statement from Fractal here , including support links and guides to disconnecting the hub. The original review follows below.

The Design: A Half-Size Torrent

I've seen other reviewers complain that the top panel is easily scratched but I haven't noticed this after about 3 months of use, and I've removed it at least 10 times. I've had the PC on top of my desk and underneath it as well. I've leaned the top panel against the wall, had it fall to the floor, and its still pristine. I think those comments may have been reviewers trying to identify a negative given they only spent a day or two with the case instead of a few weeks/months. Removable top bezel and routing clips with velcro ties make for easy installation and cable management My CPU temps were immediately worse due to less cooling. Idle temps increased to 32 - 35 C, gaming increased to 50 C, and standalone Cinebench R23 runs increased to 74 - 75 C after running the benchmarks for an hour.

TLDR: Intel i7 12700 paired with an EVGA RTX 3060 Ti FTW3 Gaming ULTRA, 750 W PSU, 32 GB 3600/18 memory.

The main interior compartment is designed to hold the motherboard and up to a triple-slot 335mm graphics card. Not only does this make the Nano able to support most video cards, it gives you plenty of room to maneuver when installing your motherboard. CPU cooler clearance is excellent for a Mini-ITX case, with coolers up to 165mm in height supported. Fractal Design's new Torrent Nano is an interesting case that does a decent job of cutting the original Torrent down to size. The end result is a small case that is supplied with a single 180mm fan and which supports Mini-ITX/Mini-DTX with full sized hardware in the other departments.

What we did not expect was that temperatures inside the Torrent Nano would be quite so high as they were. Simply looking at the Torrent Nano gives the impression that air flow should be very good indeed. As you can see from our testing chart we had plenty of headroom and were a significant distance away from any problems so really this is a reminder that small form factors builds always force you to make compromises. I ran this configuration for the first 3 months and overall got very good performance. My CPU temps were 29 - 32 C at idle, 45 C during gaming, and peaked at 70 C during 1-hr Cinebench R23 runs. My GPU ran very hot and was thermally throttling while playing games and benchmarking. I decided to undervolt to 950 mV at 1980 MHz. This reduced my CPU temps to 60 - 65 C during gaming, and it peaked at 68 C during about 30 minutes of Unigine Superposition runs. I then ran Cinebench R23 and Unigine Superposition in parallel. As expected, CPU temps increased (averaged 80 C, peaked at 82 C). This is because the GPU is exhausting slightly warm air to the CPU. As expected, my GPU temps remained the same as the standalone benchmark. Adding storage devices is similarly easy. The Torrent Nano has two 2.5-inch drive mounts that reside behind the motherboard mounting tray. There's also a drive mount next to where the PSU goes on the top of the case, which can accommodate either a 2.5-inch or a 3.5-inch drive. For as long as I can remember, I've had love of all things tech, spurred on, in part, by a love of gaming. I began working on computers owned by immediate family members and relatives when I was around 10 years old. I've always sought to learn as much as possible about anything PC, leading to a well-rounded grasp on all things tech today. In my role at PCMag, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to share what I know.I've been using the Fractal Torrent Nano for the past 3-4 months with hundreds of hours of gaming and tens of hours of benchmarking. Now that I've seen its strengths and weaknesses (versus receiving the case and immediately publishing a YT review), here are my thoughts and recommendations. Building a system inside the Torrent Nano is somewhat different than you'd expect from a modern PC case. That's not unusual for a Mini-ITX case, but while many Mini-ITX chassis tend to be challenging builds due to their compact design, the Torrent Nano is delightfully easy to work in. In my opinion, the best feature of this case is the cable management. The primary cable management channel with three dedicated lanes, a bottom lane, and another lane on the right made this case a pleasure to work with. Even with an additional SSD and my Lian Li fan controller installed, cable management is super clean. Other case manufacturers could learn a thing or two from how this case is designed. The Fractal Torrent Nano is a solidly built, extremely well-designed PC case that excels in air-cooling your components. It supports the mITX form factor but it definitely isn't a "small" case by any definition of the word. It supports a standard ATX PSU which is nice for your budget (or maybe not!). In terms of looks, it has the sex appeal of Angelina Jolie or Idris Elba, depending on your preferences. The cable management is superb with a main cable channel and a ton of space at the bottom, right side, and top of the case.